The invention relates to a liquid propellant for producing propellant gases in gun barrels.
There is described in co-pending and co-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 06/480,686, filed Mar. 31, 1983 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,574,681, a liquid propellant medium for use in gun barrel weapons. Such gun barrel weapon effects a secure continuous operation and, when used, for example, with a monergolic liquid propellant medium, a complete propellant medium of the consumption with uniform combustion is achieved. The utilization of purely liquid propellant mediums can, however, lead even with such improved gun barrel weapons to unintentional gas pressure oscillations during the firing process. Even when such liquid propellant mediums are provided with further additive liquid propellant compositions, for example, by adding micro-encapsulated propellant mediums to the principal propellant medium, the afore-described gas pressure oscillations are only insignificantly mitigated.
Furthermore, it is necessary to consider that when using a liquid propellant medium within a gun barrel combustion chamber it is not possible to satisfactorily control in a definite manner an alteration of the burning surface which leads to an alteration of the burning characteristics, in particular to an alteration of the reaction velocity and thereby to an alteration of the burning time. Therefore, differing weapon and projectile-specific requirements, as can, for example, be met by solid propellant mediums by altering the powder form and proportionately altering the powder surface, can only be achieved in a limited sense with liquid propellant mediums.